The revolutionaries’ time machine

  Music psychology , or the  psychology of music , may be regarded as a branch of both  psychology  and  musicology . It aims to explain and understand  musical   behaviour  and  experience , including the processes through which music is perceived, created, responded to, and incorporated into everyday life. [1] [2]  Modern music psychology is primarily  empirical ; its knowledge tends to advance on the basis of interpretations of data collected by systematic  observation  of and interaction with  human participants . Music psychology is a field of research with practical relevance for many areas, including music  performance ,  composition ,  education ,  criticism , and  therapy , as well as investigations of human  attitude ,  skill ,  performance ,  intelligence ,  creativity , and  social behavior . Early history (pre-1850) [ edit ] The study of sound and mus...

  A generative theory of tonal music   (GTTM) is a theory of music [1]   conceived by American composer and music theorist   Fred Lerdahl   and American linguist   Ray Jackendoff   and presented in the 1983 book of the same title. It constitutes a "formal description of the musical intuitions of a listener who is experienced in a musical idiom" [1]   with the aim of illuminating the unique human capacity for musical understanding. [2] The musical collaboration between Lerdahl and Jackendoff was inspired by  Leonard Bernstein 's 1973  Charles Eliot Norton Lectures  at Harvard University, wherein he called for researchers to uncover a musical grammar that could explain the human musical mind in a scientific manner comparable to  Noam Chomsky 's revolutionary  transformational  or  generative grammar . [3] Unlike the major methodologies of music analysis that preceded it, GTTM construes the mental procedures under w...

  A   harmonic series   (also   overtone series ) is the sequence of   frequencies ,   musical tones , or   pure tones   in which each frequency is an   integer   multiple of a   fundamental . Pitched   musical instruments  are often based on an acoustic  resonator  such as a string or a column of air, which  oscillates  at numerous  modes  simultaneously. At the frequencies of each vibrating mode, waves travel in both directions along the string or air column, reinforcing and canceling each other to form  standing waves . Interaction with the surrounding air causes audible  sound waves , which travel away from the instrument. Because of the typical spacing of the  resonances , these frequencies are mostly limited to integer multiples, or  harmonics , of the lowest frequency, and such multiples form the  harmonic series . The musical  pitch  of a note is usua...

  Psychoacoustics  is the branch of  psychophysics  involving the scientific study of  sound   perception  and  audiology —how humans perceive various sounds. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the  psychological  responses associated with sound (including  noise ,  speech , and  music ). Psychoacoustics is an interdisciplinary field of many areas, including psychology, acoustics, electronic engineering, physics, biology, physiology, and computer science. Hearing is not a purely mechanical phenomenon of  wave propagation , but is also a sensory and perceptual event; in other words, when a person hears something, that something arrives at the  ear  as a mechanical sound wave traveling through the air, but within the ear it is transformed into neural  action potentials . The outer hair cells (OHC) of a mammalian  cochlea  give rise to enhanced sensitivity and better [ clarif...

  A  synthesizer  (also spelled  synthesiser ) [1]  is an  electronic musical instrument  that generates  audio signals . Synthesizers generate audio through methods including  subtractive synthesis ,  additive synthesis , and  frequency modulation synthesis . These sounds may be shaped and modulated by components such as  filters ,  envelopes , and  low-frequency oscillators . Synthesizers are typically played with  keyboards  or controlled by  sequencers , software, or other instruments. Synthesizers may be connected to other equipment via  MIDI .